Archive for the ‘S/W’ Category

The project is located at a small village in the North area of the municipality of Lorca (Murcia), inhabited by some 150 people, and belongs to a plan developed by the city council to promote the permanence of young people at their hometowns. Designing a project with this purpose made us think, in the first place, about the idea of belonging to a roughly defined group- in this particular case the young people from Las Terreras- but expressing, in the second place, the individuality of each of its members.

A young Manhattan expecting couple approached us, as they began looking for real estate for their growing family. This brought them back to their childhood neighborhood of the historical gardens of Forest Hills, NY, where Fredrick Law Olmstead had masterplanned the leafy modern enclave. This clean modern interior renovation converts a spacious 2 bedroom into a 3 bedroom and a flexible home office. In our early discussions, a small request for a \”phone jack and outlets for a laptop by his bed\” quickly evolved into realizing that our client’s work involved all hours of the day. Creating a dedicated home office became central in organizing the apartment spaces; the office became a buffer between the public open living spaces and the private bedrooms. We provided a teak slat screen to allow for light and filtered views; while a large frameless glass sliding door opens up the space onto the open dining and living room. By the time we completed the renovation, the client decided to permanently work from home.

We designed a new guesthouse for young people from all over the world at Koya-san, the head temple of the Shingon sect founded 1200 years ago, the UNESCO world heritage. It is a mixture of Japanese capsule type hotel in which the privacy is well protected, and dormitory in which the communication among the guests is active. Each single room directly faces a hall so that you can chose proper distance with other guests ensuring the privacy. Selecting of thin wooden structure, resulting that the burden load per one pillar is relatively light, visibility of environmental facilities for easier maintenance and the simple composition of the space allow not only owner of this guest house but also guests to maintain, modify and keep on using this architecture for the long time.

Technology giant Barco officially moves into its new Kortrijk campus. The new headquarters, ‘The Circle’, is the crowning jewel. The circular, transparent icon takes centre stage on the campus, with the goal of connecting the Barco employees and visitors with each other. Jean‐Michel Jaspers, CEO at Jaspers‐Eyers: “The building just is really dynamic, and gives Barco the appearance it deserves.”

KAAN Architecten has won the commission to design the New Amsterdam Courthouse. The building will be located at the intersection of the Zuidas and Parnassusweg, where the present judicial complex will be demolished. The new building is to be completed in 2020. In the meantime, the law courts will be temporarily housed elsewhere in the neighbourhood. With a staff of 1.000, including 200 judges and 800 professionals, as well as many daily visitors and the processing of 150.000 cases a year, the Courthouse of Amsterdam is the largest in the Netherlands.

Urban renewal is an act which has to be carefully planned noting its reflections to the city, and, comes up as a process which has to be managed with balance while putting a road map where all the shareholders (people, planners, architects, engineers, contractors, etc.) of the city work together.

Santa Teresa is a street located in the heart of the reborn Oporto downtown, A big urban area that slowly got abandoned and grew older in the last thirty years, but has recently been subject of a radical change, either social, cultural, economic and architectural consequently.